This blog is mostly irrelevant. Somewhat irreverent. Read it with a pinch of salt.

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Monthly Archives: April 2010

I was recently “invited” to present at the New York Venture Summit (run by youngstartup.com) as I’d been “recognized as a Top 50 Innovator”. I asked for more info, and then was I told that I’d need to pay $1500 to present. It didn’t look like a complete scam (SAP seems to back it somehow) so I took the time to tell them that, on principle, I will not support any organization that tries to solicit money from entrepreneurs for the “privilege” of giving VCs an opportunity to invest.??

Expecting that they may reply with a special gratis VIP invite, I made sure to tell them that I would only engage with them further if they changed their business model for ALL entrepreneurs.??

You will really be missing out. We’re bringing together over 80 VCs and for a company seeking funding something like this can be of tremendous value. It would take years to setup meetings with all of these investors and we are bringing them all together for one day. We’ve had many success stories and it’s truly a shame that you aren’t able to recognize that we are running a business which is providing tremendous value to both entrepreneurs and investors.

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The fact that you won’t be joining us will not have a negative affect on the summit – we will sell out and have a waiting list….it’s completely your lose!

This morning, I was reflecting on Freedom Day and what it means??to me as a South African. Although we enjoy many, many more??freedoms in South Africa today, we are still very far??from a point where we can truly celebrate freedom.??

We are not free of violence. The farmer in the Free State nor the??grandmother in Khayelitsha are safe in their homes.??

We are not free to trade. There are major barriers for South??Africans who want to trade on the internet: the world's biggest??marketplace.??

We are not free to fail at business. For most of us, if we fail,??we lose everything.??

We do not have universal free healthcare. And the state provided??healthcare we do have is abominal.??

We do not have the freedom to choose high quality education,??unless we are rich.??

Many of us have fought hard for some of these freedoms, but we cannot fight every battle and every social injustice. I??believe the one thing most important for a thriving new??generation of Freedom Fighters is freedom of communication. Being??able to connect with each other is crucial if we want to see Social Change.??

Therefore, right now, my primary battle will be connecting??people. Skyrove, the company I co-founded, enables anyone to??build & manage Wi-Fi networks, simply. (When we started out,??we were flouting a law which prevented people from crossing public boundaries with any communications device. It was illegal to take 2 tin cans and a piece of string across your neighbours fence. This law was devised to protect the state??owned telecoms company and its foreign shareholders, SBC (now AT&T) &??Malaysia Telecom.)

If people have cheaper, faster options to connect, whether ADSL,??3G, Wi-Fi or smoke signals, it means people have increased access??to knowledge & education. This will lead to more people being free??of violence. It will lead to more people will be able to trade freely & easily and??achieve financial freedom.??

I’ve been reading the book Nudge which is about how we can positively influence people’s behaviour by making simple changes to the environment. The video below shows how “Choice Architects” were able to get 66% more people to use a flight of stairs as opposed to the escalator by making a small change: every time you take a step, it makes the sound of a piano.??

My aunt, an editor who frequently edits Afrikaans books, asked me if there wasn't an easier way to create Afrikaans letters such as ??, ?? and ?? than using the ASCII / UNICODE codes for them. In the past it wasn't really a problem for her, but she recently bought a laptop that doesn't have a numeric keypad which makes it quite a bit trickier!??

Click on the result above to run the program and open the Region and Language dialog. Click on "Keyboards & Languages" tab.??

Click on the Change Keyboards button.??

You'll see your default keyboard selected. In my case, a US keyboard.??

Click on Add…

Under English (South Africa) -> Keyboard click on Show More… A long list of options will display.??

Click on United States-International and then click OK.??

You will now see United States-International added to the list. Click on OK.??

Click OK again to Close the Region and Language dialog.??

On the bottom right hand corner of your screen, you should now the "Language Bar" displayed (the icon of a keyboard). Pointing your mouse at it will briefly show you what keyboard setup your computer is using.??

Click on the keyboard icon and select United States-International. (UPDATE: I've noticed that it often defaults back to the US option automatically. Not sure why…)

Once you've done this, you'll be able to type international characters much more quickly. E.g. to type the letter ?? simply press ^ and then the letter e. Or to type ?? simply hold the Right Alt button and press S.

In short: Quickbooks is better. It has more features and is easier to use.

Hopefully I can save you some time evaluating accounting systems. We’ve run both packages in our business and even had a consultant (who’s an expert in both) come and see us.

At some point someone (typically someone smart, with an accounting background) will tell you to use Pastel. For some reason it’s popular with accountants.

Have you ever heard about how, in software, when you have a bug you simply re-write the manual and call it a feature? Well, that’s what Pastel did.

So whenever someone comes out in favour of Pastel, they’ll cite the old marketing spiel about how you can’t go back and change transactions (a bug) as if that’s a good thing. They’ll say that Quickbooks makes it easier for someone to commit fraud. This is not true: Quickbooks has a full audit trail, so even if someone did go back 6 months to “cook the books”, they’ll leave tracks.